Getting Your Home Ready for Every Season

It’s the first hard freeze of the year. Overnight the temperature drops to 15°F, and the garden hose is still screwed onto the faucet by the back door. Nothing seems wrong in the morning. Then, the first warm day in April, someone turns that faucet on and water starts pouring into the wall behind it. The pipe split back in November. Nobody knew until it was used again.

Most damage to a house doesn’t come from bad luck. It comes from a job that should have been done on a certain weekend, and wasn’t. Here’s a season-by-season guide to the jobs that matter most, and how to make sure they get done every year without having to remember them.

Why a calendar beats a good memory

Water is the quiet threat. According to the Insurance Information Institute, water damage and freezing made up 22.6% of homeowners insurance claims in 2023, with an average claim of about $15,400 from 2019 to 2023. About one insured home in 60 has a water or freeze claim each year.

Fire is the fast one. A dryer vent full of lint, a gutter full of pine needles or a woodpile against the siding can turn a small spark into a lost home.

What these risks have in common is timing. Pipes need to be ready before the first freeze, not after. Gutters and roofs need to be clear before wildfire season, not during it. The work is easy. Remembering to do it at the right time, every year, is the hard part.

Fall: get ahead of the first freeze

In cold climates, this is the most important season of the year for your plumbing. Building researchers at IBHS put the danger point for unprotected pipes at about 20°F outside, and pipes in garages, crawl spaces, attics and outside walls are the first to go. A pipe often bursts not where the ice forms, but downstream of it, where pressure builds up between the ice and a closed faucet.

Winterize outdoor faucets (hose bibs)

The American Red Cross recommends these steps for every outdoor faucet:

Disconnect, drain and store your hoses. A hose left on traps water in the faucet, even in a “frost-free” one.
Close the indoor valve that feeds each outdoor faucet. It’s usually in the basement, crawl space or a utility room, close to where the pipe goes through the wall.
Open the outdoor faucet and let the water in the line drain out.
Leave the outdoor faucet open for the winter, so any water left in the pipe has room to expand without splitting it.

An insulated foam cover over each faucet adds another layer of protection and costs a few dollars.

Note: Not sure which indoor valve goes with which outdoor faucet? Figure it out now, on a nice day, and write it down. Our guide to finding your water shutoff shows where these valves usually hide.

Protect the rest of the plumbing

Blow out or drain sprinkler systems following the manufacturer’s or installer’s directions. The Red Cross warns against putting antifreeze in these lines unless the instructions call for it.
Insulate exposed pipes in the garage, crawl space and attic with foam pipe sleeves. Where it’s very cold, UL-listed heat tape or heat cable helps.
Seal drafts where pipes go through outside walls and around crawl-space vents.
Know where your main water shutoff is, and make sure it turns. If a pipe does burst, every minute it runs is more water in your house.

Get the heat and the alarms ready

Service the furnace or heat pump and put in a fresh filter.
Have the chimney inspected before you light the first fire of the season.
Test your smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. NFPA recommends testing smoke alarms monthly and replacing them when they’re 10 years old. Heating season is also when carbon monoxide risk goes up, so make sure you have CO alarms on every level and outside sleeping areas.
Clean the gutters once the leaves are down, so melting snow has somewhere to go.

Winter: when the cold sets in

Keep the heat on. If you go away, the Red Cross says to leave the heat set no lower than 55°F.
Open the cabinet doors under kitchen and bathroom sinks on outside walls, so warm air can reach the pipes.
Let a faucet drip on the coldest nights if it’s fed by pipes in an outside wall or unheated space. Moving water is much harder to freeze.
Keep the garage door closed if water lines run through the garage.
Keep snow off outside vents for the furnace, water heater and dryer. A blocked vent can push carbon monoxide back into the house.
If a pipe freezes, thaw it with a hair dryer, an electric heating pad or towels soaked in hot water. Never use a torch or any other open flame. If you can’t find the frozen spot or can’t reach it, call a plumber, and know where the main shutoff is before the ice melts.

Spring: thaw and inspect

Turn the outdoor water back on slowly. Close each outdoor faucet, open the indoor valve, then go inside and look and listen for leaks near where the pipe goes through the wall. A pipe that split over the winter often doesn’t show it until the water is back on.
Check the roof, gutters and downspouts for winter damage, and make sure water drains away from the foundation.
Test the sump pump by pouring a bucket of water into the pit, before the spring rains.
Clean the dryer vent. NFPA has found that failure to clean is the leading cause of home clothes dryer fires. Clean the lint filter every load, and have the vent duct cleaned at least once a year.
Service the air conditioning and change the filter again.

Summer and fall: wildfire season

In much of the West, wildfire season now runs from early summer well into fall, and it starts earlier every year. Most homes lost to wildfire aren’t caught by a wall of flame. They’re lit by embers that blow ahead of the fire and land on something that burns, like dry leaves in a gutter, a doormat, a stack of firewood or bark mulch against the wall.

NFPA’s Firewise program breaks the area around a house into three zones:

0 to 5 feet: the immediate zone

This is the most important area, and California now calls it Zone 0. The goal is nothing that can burn right next to the house.

Clear the roof and gutters of leaves and pine needles.
Replace bark and wood mulch with gravel, pavers or bare soil.
Move firewood, lumber and trash bins away from the house. CAL FIRE says to move firewood at least 30 feet out.
Clear under decks and porches, and don’t store anything there that can burn.
Cover attic and crawl-space vents with fine (1/8-inch) metal mesh to keep embers out.
Trim branches so they’re at least 10 feet from the chimney.
Bring in or put away doormats, cushions and patio furniture when a fire is nearby.

5 to 30 feet: the intermediate zone

Keep grass mowed and watered, remove dead plants, trim trees so their lower branches are well off the ground, and leave space between shrubs and trees so fire can’t climb from one to the next.

30 to 100 feet: the extended zone

Thin out dense brush, clear dead trees and fallen branches, and keep the ground free of heavy piles of debris.

Get ready to go

Keep hoses connected and long enough to reach every side of the house during fire season. (This is the opposite of winter, which is why it helps to have both on a schedule.)
Pack a go bag and plan two ways out of your neighborhood. Ready.gov has a good checklist.
Make sure your documents can leave with you, even if you can’t. Here’s how we protect ours.

Let Dwell Secure keep the calendar

None of these jobs is hard. The hard part is remembering, every year, that the hose bibs need draining the week before the first freeze, or that the gutters need clearing before fire season instead of after. That’s what the maintenance schedules in Dwell Secure are for.

Create a schedule once, and it repeats on its own. Choose daily, weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly, every six months, annually or a custom number of days. Each one shows up on your dashboard as Due Soon in the week before it’s due, and as Overdue if the date slips by. When you mark one done, Dwell Secure keeps a history with your notes and sets the next due date from the day you actually did it.

Here’s a starter set we’d add for a home in a cold climate with wildfire risk:

Replace the furnace filter: quarterly (or monthly if you have pets or allergies)
Winterize the outdoor faucets: annually, two weeks before your average first freeze
Turn the outdoor faucets back on and check for leaks: annually, after the last freeze
Blow out the sprinkler system: annually, in the fall
Test the smoke and CO alarms: monthly
Clean the gutters: every six months
Clean the dryer vent: annually
Test the sump pump: annually, before the spring rains
Clear the 5-foot zone around the house: monthly through fire season
Service the furnace and air conditioning: every six months

A few more things make it work better:

Link schedules to the things they’re for. Add your furnace as a service item with its make, model, serial number, install date and photos, and put the filter size in the notes. Then link the filter schedule to it, so whoever goes to the store buys the right one.
Put the hose bibs on the map. Mark each outdoor faucet and the indoor valve that feeds it on your floor plan or aerial photo, with a photo of each valve. Next fall you won’t need to remember which one goes where.
Save your vendors. Link your plumber, HVAC company and chimney sweep to the equipment they service, so the phone number is right there when something breaks.
Share the house. If you travel for the winter, give a neighbor or house sitter access to your property. They’ll see where the water shutoff is and how to use it, and which schedules are coming up.

Every new property in Dwell Secure already starts with a schedule to check your smoke and CO alarm batteries every year. Add the rest of your calendar in an afternoon, and next year you won’t have to remember any of it.